Derek is a thankful guy. The other day when he was getting dressed I told him he picked out a cool shirt. He thanked me for getting it for him and then thanked me for his socks when he put them on.

He loves Sunbeams and works all week on the papers that Sister Powers sends home. He says he is one of Jesus's knights. I think he'll love learning about the Armor of God someday.

We have been going to Lowes for their Build and Grow workshops. On Friday when I told him we would be going the next day he turned on the computer so I could show him what we would make. Early Saturday morning he jumped in my bed with his clothes and started to get dressed. He kept telling me to get up so we could go to "Woes." He's even asked me to tell him a bed time story about Lowes and every day he asks me when the next "Woes Day" is.

For St. Patrick's Day, Merian made green foot prints and placed them around the house. They stopped at each bedroom door and left a tiny origami frog for each occupant of the room. (She loves making frogs and taught her class how to make them when they were studying frogs.) I was dually impressed when the next morning she had cleaned them up!

Derek wasn't ready for them to be gone, however, so he made his own to scatter around. Every time I would clean them up he would make more. One time they were orange and he called them volcano footprints.

He's also been ripping up white paper and dropping them from the loft. Then he goes downstairs and makes angels in them.

Get Aboard the Potty Train

The easiest way to potty train a kid is to have one of the same gender about six years before. Granted, it will be up to you to potty train them. but it will all pay off.

When it was time for Derek to be potty trained I just asked Michael to take him when ever he went. He would call out, "Come on Derek. Let's go shoot some bad guys." And he would happily go. It was the quickest any of our kids were potty trained and without any accidents or relapses. All I had to do was supply the candy for both boys. Michael also taught him about modesty and to this day Derek is very private. (Except sometimes, when he is in there for a long time, he gets bored and calls for Eliza to keep him company. Poor girl!)

Now it is Eliza's turn and Emma and Merian were more than happy to help out. They were so excited to show her the new potty chair and panties how could Eliza not be thrilled at this new adventure? It is only day two, and at risk of jinxing our luck, she is doing great. Emma and Merian are too. They jump at the chance to take her; I don't even remind them. In fact, when Eliza went today and picked up the inside of the chair to show me the results, Merian whisked them out of my hand to go clean up and help her wash her hands, lest she be at risk for not earning her share of the candy.

Our old chair was dangerously broken after so many kids so I went to find another one. It's hard to find any basic baby things now days. I guess they want you to buy two of everything: one pink and one blue. I debated a long time about which one to get but decided that the ones that make noise might just freak her out and hinder her progress. I got a frog chair like the one below, except with a pink insert. Today when all the kids were gone I asked her if she needed to go and she said, "I'll go hop on the frog!"

It's good this next one is a girl. Maybe by then Eliza can potty train her!

dahaha hellow!

ewmo [elmo] here! ewmo likes to play imaginary! lately ewmo pretend he in play! ewmo take break from sessame street and be in "beuty and the boot"! it fun, and elmo wear a ton of makeup to make me look innattural! ewmo awso go to di! we win second place, and top secret extra instant challenge! in chawenge, we have chawecter, and i selfecsly greedy person and we win second! we so good at the videogame of wife.

-michae-i mean elmo

The REAL D.I Champions!!!

By Megan

I did D.I too! My team name was "The No Name Team." (We had a tough time agreeing on a name) The people on my team are: Tirsah, LaNae, Ryan, Kaitlin, and Jeffery. Our challenge was to make a skit that involved a puppet: ours was about "Goldylocks and the Three Bears." I was Momma Bear (who was a hippie), Jeffrey was Pappa Bear, and Ryan was Baby Bear (a jobless 28 year-old who still lives with his parents). After the bears left the home to find Baby Bear a job, Punkylocks broke into the house. A pizza (our puppet, puppeteer-ed and voiced by Tirsah) convinced Punkylocks to stop breaking into houses.

Tirsah was so nice and bought us all pins with this year's motto ( WADIng in Creativity; the WADI stands for Washington Destination Imagination). Tirsah is also going to be home schooled next year!! Whoohooo! I'm super excited!!

D.I.

By Emma Johnson

I participate in a activity called D.I. (Destination Imagination). Two weeks ago was the regional tournament at East Valley High School in Spokane. The night before the tournament I was recovering from being sick. Megan, Michael, and I were in Beauty and the Beast for A.C.T and if you saw it, we were villagers in the village scene and mob scene. Michael was also in the tavern and battle scene. We were also serving trays in the "Be Our Guest" scene. Megan and Michael were finishing a performance and everyone else in our family was watching. I was staying home with my mom and she was trying to brush my hair (I had tons of tangles from being sick!), finish packing, and cleaning the house. We were going to spend the night at my Aunt Kim's house because she lives close to the tournament. That way we wouldn't have to wake up very early to drive to Spokane. When they finally got home then we got in the car and set off.

When we got to Kim's house then we set up our beds and went to sleep. It was 1:30 in the morning and we were going to have to wake up early! We couldn't go to sleep because Skitter, their hamster, was running on his wheel. Luckily, Aunt Kim came and brought him downstairs.

In the morning, we had scrambled eggs, cheese, bacon and hash browns that Kim made in the crock pot for breakfast. Then we had donuts! We packed up and went to the tournament. When we got there, we had to look for my team. Our team name is the Red Radical Rockets. I'm the only girl on our team. We found them and we got ready. Before we performed we watched other teams.

Our challenge is called DIrect Deposit. We had to get some objects over a six foot barrier into some targets. We couldn't touch or look over the barrier. We made a crane and I made the targets. I sawed and hammered the wood and painted them red. We also had to perform a skit which we made a recycle truck because our skit was about recycling. We didn't get any objects into the targets but we did a great job on our skit. Then we had to do an instant challenge, but that's TOP SECRET! We got third place! I even got a medal.